The skies were clear, a darker, more brilliant blue than I’d ever seen in June in the city. There wasn’t a trace of smog. And but for the sound of the wind and the water and the wild animals that had repopulated the grid-like warrens, there was no noise. It was peaceful.
I started taking walks along East River Drive, trying to loosen up the ankle. I wasn’t looking forward to the eighty-six story climb up to the top of Carcher Tower, but knew I would never make it unless I strengthened the ankle. Within a couple weeks, I was making six or seven miles a day. The leg still hurt, but it was much more tolerable by then. I’d even stopped taking pain pills. And I hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol in weeks. Even the thought of a drink made me nauseous.
It was toward the end of July when I found Jennifer. I’d wandered all the way over to Battery Park one sunny morning and was circling it, feeding the pigeons with a year-old box of Saltines. I was on my way back to where I was staying.
Someone was laughing.
I was utterly shocked. And terrified. After almost a year of not hearing another human voice, of being completely alone in the world, I’d gotten used to the silence. I liked it. But there it was, this wild bray of laughter, so clearly human. It scared the hell out of me.
And I knew immediately who was making it.
A year ago, I’d heard her laugh, and her laughter had found me through the bray of the partygoers in Cliff Dwellers. Back then I’d thought the sound had been so pure, so natural. I’d been inexorably drawn to it. But this time, I wanted to run from it. I wanted to flee.
But I knew I couldn’t. I couldn’t because I’d been the one to bring her back. That day last fall, back in the IKEA, I’d wished her back. I’d thought the wish hadn’t worked, but here she was. And so I suddenly knew that the Wishing Stone worked after all. I knew I didn’t need Cliff Dwellers. I didn’t need it to be my birthday. I fingered the stone in my pocket and thought of what I’d wish for next.
She kept laughing, sounding like a woman on the verge of insanity. That’s what I thought, anyway, before thinking, No, not on the verge. She’s already there.
She was sitting outside a little bistro on State Street, and she was laughing at the birds. I don’t know why she would do that; they weren’t doing anything un-birdlike. They were just there, clucking and pecking. I watched her for a few minutes. Every once in a while, this wild bray of laughter would come pouring out of her mouth for no good reason.
Our eyes connected, but nothing registered in her face.
I made sure she saw me coming, as I didn’t want to startle her. But even though her eyes tracked me, she continued to laugh. She didn’t acknowledge me until I was finally standing right in front of her.
She looked just like the day we’d met, not a hair out of place, her face plastered with makeup. A half-empty bottle of tequila sat on the table in front of her. There was no glass. I felt a wave of revulsion come over me.
“Jennifer?”
The laughter immediately died.
“It’s Hanson…” I’d momentarily forgotten my own last name, hadn’t spoken it in months. “Hanson Trask.”
“Where the hell have you been?”
I frowned. “I don’t—”
“Do you have any idea how long I’ve been sitting here? Well, do you?”
Ten months, I wanted to say, but I shook my head. I pitied her then, knowing what she must’ve gone through, waking up in this empty world all alone and not knowing how she got here. I’d experienced the exact same emotions.
“Where’s the egg?”
“What?”
“The egg, asshole!” she shrieked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. But I did. She was talking about my Wishing Stone.
“You stole it from me. I want it back! Steel’s waiting for a report.”
“Steel? What’s he got to do with this?”
“I was testing it for him. We were testing it.”
“We?”
But then I remembered.
That night, she’d asked me if I wanted to go somewhere private.
“Somewhere we can be alone,” I’d said. “Totally alone.”
“Yes,” she’d said, and I remember her smile taking on a delectably wicked curved to it. I’d misinterpreted her intentions. “Wouldn’t that be an interesting scenario?”
“Scenario?” I’d asked, confused.
But now the word rang inside my head like a warning bell.
I remembered the Jennifer of a year ago smiling and taking hold of my hands. She’d led me behind a screen that had been set up behind the stage. It’s where I’d woken up the next morning. I remember thinking that it wasn’t exactly private, but at least it was out of view of the other partiers. I’d been curious to find out what she had in mind.
Looking at her now, I wanted to puke. She was still the same woman, still attractive—if you didn’t look too closely. But the evidence of her insanity was there on her face, in the fine lines near her eyes, in the ugly bray of her laughter. Or maybe it was always there and the past ten months of solitude had brought it to the surface.
She’d taken my hands that night and I remember she had been holding something, and then I knew that it had been the Wishing Stone. What had she called it?
An egg.
Stupid name for it.
And I remember that I’d noticed it earlier in our conversation. I’d thought it was a bottle of some sort, for makeup or perfume. As she held my hands, I remember thinking how smooth and warm it was—presumably from the heat of her skin.
She’d squeezed my hands then and, as I peered into her eyes, I remember becoming aware of this strange vibrating sensation passing through my arms; my whole body was thrumming. I’d thought it was just from being so close to her.
She’d leaned over and whispered into my ear: “Ready?”
And I’d asked, “For what?”
“It’s your birthday, right?”
“Yes, but—”
The sounds of the restaurant seemed loud, just the other side of that paper-thin screen.
“Close your eyes,” she’d said to me. “And make a wish.”
I remember thinking to myself that nobody’s birthday wishes come true, but I thought I’d humor her anyway.
There was a sudden crash of platters from the main part of the restaurant and the tinkling sound of breaking glass. This was followed by a few shouts and a lot of laughter.
I wish everyone else was gone.
There had been a bright flash behind my eyes, a searing whiteness. I’d felt an excruciating pain inside my head. I’d wanted to cry out but couldn’t.
Then, waking up the next day, alone…
“Do you still have it?” she asked, startling me out of the reverie. “Do you have the egg?”
I hesitated a moment, then shook my head. I did have it, I just wasn’t sure it would be wise to let her know exactly where it was. “But I know where it is. First, I want to know everything about it. Is it magic?”
She laughed again, even louder this time, and it was really getting on my nerves. “It’s not magic, stupid. It’s new-tech, which you apparently wouldn’t recognize if it pinched you on your ass.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“The Arab.”
The guy who’d smelled of cinnamon. I remembered him now, the one who’d been talking to Street that night. I tried to recall the picture I’d snapped of the two of them on my cell phone, but it was too long ago and the details were too fuzzy, lost to me as surely as my phone was somewhere in the city.
“They call it a Scenario Egg. It allows you to—how did they put it?—hatch any possibility you can imagine.”
I waited. Her explanation brought to mind a million questions, but I waited for her to go on.
“I found it in Dubai and brought it to Street’s attention. He wanted to test it—but not on himself, of course. He wanted me to find someone in-house. We just needed an interesting scenario to play out and some
innocent to test it on, someone who wouldn’t bias the results.”
“Me.” She nodded. “But why?”
“Ask your boss. He volunteered you.”
Cal. The prick. Probably his way of getting even with me for beating him all those times in golf.
“How does it work?”
She sighed. “Solid state circuitry, adaptive networking, pressure-sensitive bioelectric interface. You have to hold it just right, thumb over one end and the other end dead center in your palm, otherwise it doesn’t work. Then, you think of a scenario and it hatches itself out in your mind.”
“How?”
“It takes advantage of the sum total of all your experiences, everything you’ve sensed and learned and stored away over all your years on the planet. It facilitates the creation of temporary connections—trillions of them, in all possible permutations—inside your brain. You think of a scenario and it plays out depending on your own biases and prejudices.”
She laughed. “And, boy, your boss is sure going to be surprised to learn what you’ve done with the company’s money, and how you just ran away rather than owning up to your mistakes.”
I ignored that last bit.
“Are you saying I’ve just lived an entire year in my own mind? What the hell’s happened to my body? And does that mean you’re not really sitting in front of me right now?”
“Actually, I am here, or my mind is, anyway, sharing this experience with you. I was the one who proposed the scenario—well, you gave me the idea, and I just went with it. You came with me because we were both in contact with the egg”
I realized something then. If what she said was true, then she would’ve been here the whole time. She would’ve been in the restaurant with me when I woke up.
“To answer your question,” she went on, “no time has passed. It’s all instantaneous. That’s the power of the device: instantaneous real-time experience. A person could play out an infinite number of possibilities to any scenario he’s presented with.”
Bullshit, I wanted to scream at her. It was even more ridiculous than thinking the thing could grant birthday wishes.
“So, how do you end the simulation?”
“You crack it, crack the egg.”
I waved my hand around me. “You’re telling me none of this is real? That we crack this egg…thing and everything goes back to the way it was before? Everyone returns?”
“We return. To reality.”
No, I wanted to tell her. This was reality, not that former life.
“What happens if we don’t crack it?”
“The simulation just keeps running.”
“Forever? What if we die inside the simulation?”
She seemed started by the suggestion. “Honestly?” she said, giving me a strange look. “I don’t know.”
† † †
“When I woke up, I was wandering around in the street,” she said, as we made our way down to Pier Eleven and the place where I was staying. “I couldn’t remember anything at first. Apparently, the device still has a few bugs that need to be worked out, like short-term memory loss and disorientation.”
“You think?”
Plus all that blinding pain. I didn’t say that out loud.
“Is it there,” she asked, “the egg, where you’re staying? It’s safe?”
I shook my head. “It’s safe. But it’s not there.”
“Where then?” she asked again.
I needed time to think. I still wasn’t convinced by her explanation. I wasn’t even sure my own thoughts on the matter were all that reasonable anymore, but I’d rather place my trust in my own thoughts than hers. She was obviously fifty cents shy of a dollar.
It was still three days until my birthday. I needed to put her off until then. Then I could test my theory while seeming like I was accepting hers.
“It’s getting late,” I said. “You should go home.”
But it was clear she wasn’t going to leave my side.
I finally had to lie. “It’s at Cliff Dwellers.”
“I already looked there,” she said. “That’s the first place I went when I remembered. I couldn’t find it. That’s how I knew you had it.”
“I hid it there. Before I left.”
She glared at me for a moment and I thought she was going start screaming again, but instead she just shrugged and said, “Okay. let’s go get it.”
We both turned and looked at the tower rising above us. The tip of it was tinged orange by the setting sun.
“You ready to climb eighty-six sets of stairs?” I asked. “It’ll be dark soon.”
“Tomorrow, then,” she replied. “And I’d advise you to start thinking about what you’re going to say to your boss.”
† † †
I managed to avoid her the next day by slipping out before dawn and making my way into the heart of the city. I told her I just wanted to enjoy one last day of solitude. I had a lot to think about, I said, and for once she seemed to actually understand.
The next day, I made up some lame excuse for not attempting to climb the tower. It was a good thing the third day happened to be my birthday, because she’d lost all her patience by then. I didn’t know what she was capable of, and I was glad I wouldn’t have to find out.
It took us nearly three hours to climb the stairs. The whole way up I kept flashing back to the last time I’d been in Carcher Tower, the fear I’d felt that I was alone in the world. Now the thing I feared most was everyone coming back again.
“Where is it?” she asked when we finally reached the top floor. I was puffing, but she was clearly obsessed to the point where she couldn’t even acknowledge her own exhaustion.
I looked around. Everything was covered in dust. The windows were heavily streaked.
I pulled the Wishing Stone out of my pocket and held it up, keeping just out of her reach. She gave me a look of utter contempt, but even that couldn’t hide the manic glee in her eyes.
“Give it to me. Give me the egg. It’s time to crack it.”
But I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to go back.
“Crack the egg, Hanson,” she demanded.
I looked at it in my hands. It felt warm and alive. For the past two evenings, I’d sat in the dark and practiced placing my thumb and palm in the places she’d said to make it work. I’d been careful to clear my mind.
“Now!” she screamed.
I raised it above my head, then swung it down toward the bar, except I switched directions at the last moment and the egg went crashing into her face. Blood splattered everywhere, her blood, and—
Beyond the screen, there’s a sudden explosion of noise: plates shattering, crashing to the floor, glass breaking, people laughing and shouting. Music’s playing. The fountain is running. Someone shouts for Freeny McElroy to let it ride.
In our hands, the object is whole, unbroken. So is Jennifer’s face.
She’s wearing the black dress again, and those ugly blue diamond earrings are dangling from her ears. Her face is flawless once again, and except for the look in her eyes, she seems to glow. But her eyes are dark and it tells me she remembers.
She starts to laugh. And when she does, it’s the laugh of a crazy woman.
“This will be worth billions,” she shrieks.
I cringe away from her, the Wishing Stone still in my hands.
“Hanson?”
I stand up, fully expecting my head to want to explode. But there’s no pain at all. I’m tipsy from all the Diaka I’d been drinking—
a year ago
—all night.
“Hanson,” she says. Panic ripples across her face, making her even uglier. “What are you doing? Don’t do anything stupid. Hanson!”
But it’s too late. I’ve already placed my thumb and palm around the egg.
† † †
When I wake up, I try to get myself into a sitting position, but it feels like a stick of dynamite has gone off inside my head. I have no immediate recollection of w
here I am or why I’m here on a grassy knoll. The air smells of salt water. It’s mid-afternoon and I’m totally alone.
I can’t remember a thing, but I know if I wait long enough it will come to me, so I don’t worry.
I make my down the hill and through some trees and the first thing that comes to me is the memory of a city.
New York, my mind tells me. Millions of people.
But there is no city. There are no people. I’m alone and everything is wild and pristine, untouched by human hands. There’s no sign at all that anyone has ever been here before.
A voice sounds in my head, my own voice. It tells me I made a wish.
That’s ridiculous. wishes don’t come true.
I make my way through the bracken and find the edge of the land where it meets a river.
Another memory, a whisper: Ferries.
There are none, just gulls and the waves lapping the sandy shore.
I reach into my pocket and pull out the odd egg-shaped object that I’d woken to find in my lap. I have no idea what it’s for, but something deep inside me, a ghost of a memory tells me what I need to do with it.
I find a rock nearly as tall as I am and I stand beside it. I raise my hand and take in a deep breath. Then I bring it down.
The egg sails out over the water and hits the surface with a plunk. It disappears down into it.
I breathe and wait, but nothing happens—nothing that isn’t supposed to happen, anyway. The sun begins to set. And all around me, the empty world relaxes. I’m still here, alone, just as I’d wished.
“Happy birthday,” I whisper to the world, and the wind gently whispers its thanks back.
I turn and make my way into the wood to find a place to spend the night. I stick my hands into my pockets and my hand encounters a familiar object there, something round and warm. It seems to hum with happiness, as if glad it has found me again.
And then I know: I can’t get rid of it. I must protect it. I can’t let it break.
‡ ‡
Author’s note
Insomnia: Paranormal Tales, Science Fiction, & Horror Page 8